Marketing the Army

Following a tradition established in my infancy, I sat beside my brother for an hour today and watched as he slaughtered terrorists fighting against America's Army, a first-person shooter video game commissioned by the U.S. Army. The game, designed with step-by-step oversight from Army consultants and featuring motion capture from actual soldiers in simulated combat situations, mimics the operations of combat forces in life-like missions--capture a bridge, rescue a casualty from a downed helicopter, hold territory. Since Richard has devoted perhaps a thousand hours in the last three years to playing this game, and since he is a picky FPS vintner, I can safely assume that it's a balls-out whale of good play. I certainly felt a substantial and guilty pleasure in spectating.

It's free to download, but it's damned expensive. According to a November 2003 article in the Chicago Tribune, the Army spends $4.5 million a year developing and operating new versions of the game. The game has an ESRB rating of "T," so that it is ostensibly reserved for would be snipers aged thirteen and over, but everyone knows ESRB ratings are as laughably meaningless as Bob Dole's 1996 anti-drug slogan "Just Don't Do it." Besides, "T" is a relatively tame rating for games of this genre. (There's a marked absence of gore and tits, which probably explains the rating.) Based on thoroughly unscientific observation of the few tweeners and teens I know, I'm guessing that the median age for players hovers around 15 or 16. Picture the hordes of pallid, computer-bound boys just ready to be plucked from their seats and made men--or, at least, made cannon fodder for our continuing War on Terrorism--and you'll have a better sense of why the Army spends .375% of its annual recruiting budget on this shoot-'em-up.

From the FAQs page:

"Q: Why are you doing this game? A:...The Army's game is an entertaining way for young adults to explore the Army and its adventures and opportunities as a virtual Soldier. As such, it is part of the Army's communications strategy designed to leverage the power of the Internet as a portal through which young adults can get a first hand look at what it is like to be a Soldier."

Then the proverbial hand-wringing parent asks the FAQs page, "Q: Is this a recruiting tool?"

With the precision and candor that makes the DoD what it is, the FAQs respond,

"A:...With the passage of time, elimination of the draft and reductions in the size of the Army have resulted in a marked decrease in the number of Americans who have served in the Army and from whom young adults can gain vicarious insights into the challenges and rewards of Soldiering and national service. Therefore, the game is designed to substitute virtual experiences for vicarious insights. It does this in an engaging format that takes advantage of young adults' broad use of the Internet for research and communication and their interest in games for entertainment and exploration."

There's something about this that reminds me of Channel One, the news service that strongarms America's underfunded schools into forcing their students to watch five minutes of video advertising a day during a homeroom period, or of McDonald's setting up shop in poor neighborhoods, or Joe Camel preying upon those who get most of their news from cartoons. By pouring the same old recruitment wine into slick, 300MB bottles, isn't the Army just conning the youth of the nation into early brand loyalty?

This was my first reaction, but I'm not entirely sure it's correct. After all, theoretically I have nothing against Army recruitment. I'm grateful for those 160,000 soliders in Iraq and 11,000 in Afghanistan who are fighting to keep me and Mary Cheney safe. If the Army has a $1.2 billion recruiting budget to spend, it may as well spend it as effectively as it can. My chief complaint about the Army's recruitment techniques is the familiar charge that they disproportionately target poor urban and rural kids, often kids of color. (The Economist, always contrarian, makes an interesting case for poor kids who want the Army but have tattooes on their hands or other characteristics that disqualify them.)

But America's Army might naturally target an audience with deeper pockets, those who have enough money for a computer and an Internet connection that can sustain a 300MB download and some serious video card activity. So what if the Army finds ways to convince middle-class teenagers to sign up? It's a trade-off between spending the $4.5 million on developing a video game or on trawling the strip malls of Flint for high school dropouts. The Army hasn't tracked how many new recruits the video game has brought in, so it's hard to tell if the game has been effective. Anyway, the set of boys this game targets is already so innundated with FPS games that any study into the effectiveness of America's Army as a recruiting vehicle must contend with the influence of hundreds of other, more popular martial reenactments. Meanwhile, there's the hapless recruiter weighing the rock against the hard place, with a coveted adolescent recruit wandering in between.

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"We must save democracy," giggles Richard, enjoying the absurdity as he enjoys his first pee break in five hours. I've got to stretch my legs. All this Army talk is almost making me wish I weren't a man-hating dyke who would be too attracted to her ugly-ass comrades to serve properly in America's Army. Oh well, Army of One it'll have to be.

(Unrelatedly, if there's a draft, how many people will claim to be gay? If there's a draft, will soldiers be allowed to have gang tattooes on their hands? And if there's a draft, will the tattooeries of America be flooded with willing hands?)